It certainly isn't the exact same thing but it's analogous - converting a piece of copyrighted, or non-copyrighted material into another medium can produce another piece of copyrighted material. This is something that publishers have done for decades or more, slightly modifying a work and then claiming copyright on the derived version, this is why when a museum digitizes an artwork they can hold the copyright on the image, whether the art is an old master or by a living artist.

This is only true if you already control the copyright. All governments give the copyright holder the exclusive right to decide distribution. That's absolute.

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As to requiring permission, that's exactly where Google's fair use argument fell. Most of the books that it digitized were out of print with unclear rights, and thus the legal argument was that the requirement to get permission ceased to apply. In fact the requirement to get the author's permission is a relatively new one in law in most jurisdictions, and as far as I am aware it does not apply in the US, where music composers only get license fees. For example Shostakovich sought to prevent the use of one of his compositions in the US and was refused.
( Shostakovitch v. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp.).

The EU does have legal protection for so called 'moral rights' and so if you want to release your recording in Europe you do have to get the composer's permission, but this isn't universal.

This is again not true. The inability to find a copyright holder does not mean that you have the right to use the work as you see fit. It means just the opposite. It means that you cannot use the work. The EU adheres to these conventions. It's one reason why when getting DVDs of Tv shows, both here, in the EU, Japan, and other places, you will sometimes find that the original music is not there. That's because all of the copyright owners cannot be found. If one cannot be found, then the work cannot be used. So if there are ten copyright holders, and nine say you can use, or license the work, but you can't find the tenth, then you can't use the work. Period!

There are a few countries such as the former USSR, and I believe Russia today to a lessor extent, that were not part of the international copyright, trademark and patent system, and so things were, and are a bit complex regarding works from there being used elsewhere, and works from elsewhere being used there.

That's not correct. Not every statement to your lawyer in a corporate setting is privileged. In this case, google screwed up, because this e-mail was apparently a response to a question from the CEO, so even if it were to the lawyer as well, it wouldn't be privileged.

I did not say any and all communication is privileged. I said that the official email could fall into that category. http://http://www.aigclaw.org/tic51.html
This link I found details what would and would not fall under privilege. If Google was simply asking business advice then no it's not privileged but if it were legal advice then no. Also, just because the CEO asked a question doesn't erase privilege. But as I said previously, that point is moot because Google's problem is that it is a draft of an email and NOT the email itself.

Theft is evil in every religion, as far as I know. It doesn't matter whether it's criminal or civil. The people doing it are still stealing property that isn't theirs, and they are doing it willfully.
And has been brought up a couple of posts ago, Google has their own definition of evil, and their actions should be measured against the standards they set up for themselves.

Infringing a patent isn't theft. Not legally, not morally, not factually, not in any way.
If it was theft then you would be sent to prison for it and the state would handle the prosecution. The fact that theft is immoral is completely irrelevant.

There are also some situations where the patent issues are not clearly defined -- often a competitor will use the uncertainty to let the courts resolve the issue.

I do not believe, however, that there was any uncertainty in Google's use of Java.

Of course. One thing I agree with Google's Drummond about is that a modern technology device contains many patents. I don't agree that it's 250,000, as he said, but it's certainly a lot. No company can possibly research all of the possible patents they may be using. It's just not possible!

But, there are technology journals out there, a number on the web, such as eeTimes. There is no way that engineers don't read these, as they discuss new technology in detail, and no matter how much you know, you need to keep up. So while a new device may use 5,000 patents, all companies in the industry will know of the most important several hundred. After that, they become increasingly more obscure.

In fact, I believe that many companies who hold a large number of these obscure patents have no idea if they are being violated in most cases. Manufacturers rely on companies with these patents to contact them if they think they're being violated.

They may be, and they may not be. It's a really tough question.

In this case, it seems resolved that Google knew from the very beginning that they were in violation. The judge has told Google several times now that they should resolve this out of court because they knew they willfully violated. Google is spending their time on attempts to keep evidence out of court, and knocking down the possible cost of the violation.

Here is the best article out there (I believe) right now. It's from Fosspatents. It really looks like Google is screwed.

As to requiring permission, that's exactly where Google's fair use argument fell. Most of the books that it digitized were out of print with unclear rights, and thus the legal argument was that the requirement to get permission ceased to apply. In fact the requirement to get the author's permission is a relatively new one in law in most jurisdictions, and as far as I am aware it does not apply in the US, where music composers only get license fees. For example Shostakovich sought to prevent the use of one of his compositions in the US and was refused.
( Shostakovitch v. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp.).

The EU does have legal protection for so called 'moral rights' and so if you want to release your recording in Europe you do have to get the composer's permission, but this isn't universal.

That is absolutely false. It had nothing to do with permission. Rather, the issue is compensation. Google wanted to reprint every copyrighted and uncopyrighted work and distribute it without compensation to the authors. They were proposing an 'opt-out' method of authors having their work excluded, but the plan was for Google to make everything else available to the public (for a fee). That is a blatant infringement of the author's rights.

[QUOTE=cloudgazer;1916558]As I explained in an earlier post, there is definitely a requirement to pay the songwriter/composer a license, but there is generally no requirement to get permission to record - even for sale, though it does depend on jurisidiction. /QUOTE]

Again, permission is not the issue. The issue is that Google wanted to be able to copy and distribute work without compensating the copyright holders.

Later, the plan was modified - to the point where Google would set a side a tiny amount of money to distribute to authors without the author being able to set the price. That is, Google would tell the authors how much they were entitled to receive.

Fortunately (once in a while, the courts get it right), Google's plan is still on hold. I hope the courts are smart enough to completely eliminate Google's copyright theft.

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Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody

If living authors were screwed over in regards their own works, that is indeed a bad thing but the law is crystal clear and they should be able to seek restitution from Google.

I haven't (yet) seen any evidence that this actually happened though. I've heard "copyright holders" complain, but to me the only thing that really matters is the actual creators/authors.

The entire problem with copyright today is that the interests of the buyers and sellers of the IP are treated as if they are the same as the creators of the IP when in fact they are all leeches of one kind or another. The only thing that really matters is the people who actually create the stuff IMO.

That's ridiculous. If someone buys the full rights to a copyrighted work, they have the same rights as the author originally had. If I create a copyrighted work, why shouldn't I be able to sell those rights to someone? One of the rights that a copyright holder has is to dispose of their work as they wish - and your position basically eliminates that right.

"I'm way over my head when it comes to technical issues like this"Gatorguy 5/31/13

As to Google, meh. I love the products from both companies but am concerned about the behavior of both. However, even though Google sells your info to throw ads at you, at least they let you tinker with the OS more. Good enough for me. Apple as a company is becoming The Man. Like Google of course. I guess this is to be expected as companies become larger. So I suppose all you can do is buy the best tool for the job. Droid is (currently) the best for me.

"Overpopulation and climate change are serious shit." Gilsch"I was really curious how they had managed such fine granularity of alienation." addabox

Knowingly ripping off patented material is maybe a tiny bit evil. Trying to cover it up is perhaps a little bit more evil.

Attacking other companies, whose IP you knowingly stole from, is full on evil. Especially as you undermine them by giving away their IP for free. And to take evil over the top, then you tell the world that you do no evil while tricking hordes of mostly young opensource fans by advertising your sinister IP scheme under the guise of OPEN.

This is only true if you already control the copyright. All governments give the copyright holder the exclusive right to decide distribution. That's absolute.

No they do not, the Shostakovich suit wasn't decided in soviet russia, it was in the good ole US of A. Sorry but you're in complete error regarding the law here. The copyright holder may or may not have absolute rights to control distribution of derived works, all that is certain is that they will have a right to royalties.

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This is again not true. The inability to find a copyright holder does not mean that you have the right to use the work as you see fit. It means just the opposite. It means that you cannot use the work. The EU adheres to these conventions. It's one reason why when getting DVDs of Tv shows, both here, in the EU, Japan, and other places, you will sometimes find that the original music is not there. That's because all of the copyright owners cannot be found. If one cannot be found, then the work cannot be used. So if there are ten copyright holders, and nine say you can use, or license the work, but you can't find the tenth, then you can't use the work. Period!

Irrelevant. Google was never claiming absolute rights over these books, it was claiming fair use rights to archive and distribute small excerpts except where copyright was demonstrably ended.

But infringement isn't stealing, which is why one can't be arrested and imprisoned for it.

The argument that Google has failed to meet 'the highest ethical standard' is a much better one, but that's a far cry from being evil. Even then it's not an open and shut case, because one has to ask if it is inethical to knowingly infringe a patent which you do not believe is or ought to be valid.

Why do people feel the need to bring ethics or morality into what is a purely legal issue? Google is potentially infringing a patent owned by a huge and determined software firm. It has gone to the courts and there will be a big legal bun fight at the end of which one of the two will come out a winner. It makes no more sense to paint Google as evil here than it does to paint Oracle as evil. It's hard to think of a time when an IT firm was uncontrovertibly inethical, MS destroying netscape perhaps?

Yes it is! Whenever you take something that isn't yours, it's stealing. Just because you aren't able to take the original code and make off with it doesn't mean it isn't theft.

When something wrong is done, whether it's criminal or civil, there is a moral stigma attached. You may not like it, but it's so.

I don't know if Oracle has ever done anything that wasn't just hard business tactics or not. But Ms did a number of illegal things, and it's considered that without that, they would never have risen to the level of what they did, and it started well before Netscape.

More than is generally acknowledged. For starters Google is certainly using the Java language but that's not the problem, as far as I'm aware Oracle isn't claiming that the use of the language is an issue.

There are two issues here, one of copyright and one of violating some software patents on Java that relate to such things as the internals of a runtime. Leaving the copyright issue aside, the patent infringement is far from clear cut, as is evidenced by the fact that a lot of the preliminary rulings on oracles patents have been negative.

Now these preliminary results don't mean that Oracle has lost by any stretch, but they do surely indicate that Google can justifiably claim that there is doubt about the validity of these patents, and that the infringement of them, even the wilful infringement of them is thus hard to categorize as 'evil'.

There is no question that Google has acknowledged these patents as being valid.

Infringing a patent isn't theft. Not legally, not morally, not factually, not in any way.
If it was theft then you would be sent to prison for it and the state would handle the prosecution. The fact that theft is immoral is completely irrelevant.

Be proud, you seem to be the one person standing up for Google - so kudos they need help.

Theft: "A criminal act in which property belonging to another is taken without that person's consent."
Criminal act: "Criminal act is an act committed by a person that violates a law and which is punishable by the government."

OK I know that in our society we like to refer to people with less money who commit acts of "physical" crime as thieves and criminals. That just shows our bias toward those with enough money to hire big lawyers and conduct corporate crime - so absolutely Google knowingly conducted theft. Certainly you won't argue that from a moral or factual position would you?

That is absolutely false. It had nothing to do with permission. Rather, the issue is compensation. Google wanted to reprint every copyrighted and uncopyrighted work and distribute it without compensation to the authors. They were proposing an 'opt-out' method of authors having their work excluded, but the plan was for Google to make everything else available to the public (for a fee). That is a blatant infringement of the author's rights.

I don't know where you're getting this, would you care to provide some citations? There are multiple lawsuits and I think you're actually mixing up a lawsuit with judicial oversight of a settlement. If you are indeed talking about The Google Book Search Settlement Agreement then what you're really arguing isn't that Google is doing something wrong but rather that the Author's Guild is acting contrary to its members interests.

The problem is that the inaccuracies build up. Once you accept infringement as theft, then it is indeed immoral and indeed criminal rather than merely illegal. I'm not running anybody over any coals, I'm just trying to keep some pretty significant distinctions clear.

Copyright theft can be criminal as well. I have the law for the USA, but it's similar in many other jurisdictions.

Be proud, you seem to be the one person standing up for Google - so kudos they need help.

Theft: "A criminal act in which property belonging to another is taken without that person's consent."
Criminal act: "Criminal act is an act committed by a person that violates a law and which is punishable by the government."

OK I know that in our society we like to refer to people with less money who commit acts of "physical" crime as thieves and criminals. That just shows our bias toward those with enough money to hire big lawyers and conduct corporate crime - so absolutely Google knowingly conducted theft. Certainly you won't argue that from a moral or factual position would you?

No actually if you read your own text you'd realize that Google didn't commit theft. They didn't take property and whether or not they're found to infringe they won't be found guilty of a criminal act.

I did not say any and all communication is privileged. I said that the official email could fall into that category. http://http://www.aigclaw.org/tic51.html
This link I found details what would and would not fall under privilege. If Google was simply asking business advice then no it's not privileged but if it were legal advice then no. Also, just because the CEO asked a question doesn't erase privilege. But as I said previously, that point is moot because Google's problem is that it is a draft of an email and NOT the email itself.

As I said earlier, it's complex. But the court has stated that this document is not privileged, and Googles own lead lawyer stated it was in response to a question from the CEO, which is why the court says it's not privileged.

Infringing a patent isn't theft. Not legally, not morally, not factually, not in any way.
If it was theft then you would be sent to prison for it and the state would handle the prosecution. The fact that theft is immoral is completely irrelevant.

To you.

In actuality, the idea of patent theft is an established one, even though it's not liable to imprisonment.

This is one recent article, and there are dozens, maybe hundreds more.

It certainly isn't the exact same thing but it's analogous - converting a piece of copyrighted, or non-copyrighted material into another medium can produce another piece of copyrighted material. This is something that publishers have done for decades or more, slightly modifying a work and then claiming copyright on the derived version, this is why when a museum digitizes an artwork they can hold the copyright on the image, whether the art is an old master or by a living artist.

When a derivative work of a copyrighted item is created, the copyright remains with the holder of the original copyright. If a new copyright is granted, only the new, derivative changes to the work are copyrighted in the new copyright. The original work and copyright still belong to the holder of original copyright.

No one can slighty change a work and claim copyright over the entire work. Doing so is copyright infringement. If it were not, by law, infringement and one could freely modify and change other's works and the copyright them in one's own name, then we would not even be having this discussion -- the concept of infringement would not exist. Nor would copyrights.

An old master can not be copyrighted. It is public domain. If it is re-published in a book, the book is copyrighted and the reproduction of the old master can be copyrighted. But, the old master itself is still public domain.

Copyright can be, in a few instances such as commercial piracy operations, but patents never ever are. Have you read the copyright portion of this suit? The strong part isn't significant and the significant part isn't strong.

I seriously doubt that Google will get a felony conviction for the 750 lines of code that they actually did copy, though they should certainly have to pay damages for them. The api prototypes will almost certainly be found not to be an issue, there's tons of precedent there - Oracle itself would be infringing Microsofts copyright on spreadsheet functions if that was the case.

No they do not, the Shostakovich suit wasn't decided in soviet russia, it was in the good ole US of A. Sorry but you're in complete error regarding the law here. The copyright holder may or may not have absolute rights to control distribution of derived works, all that is certain is that they will have a right to royalties.

I didn't say the suit was in the USSR. I'm familiar with it. The copyrights were in dispute.

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Irrelevant. Google was never claiming absolute rights over these books, it was claiming fair use rights to archive and distribute small excerpts except where copyright was demonstrably ended.

Again, to you. But Google was claiming much more than that. They were claiming absolute rights. It was only after intense negotiation that they changed some of the terms, and they are still wrapped up in court over this.

When a derivative work of a copyrighted item is created, the copyright remains with the holder of the original copyright. If a new copyright is granted, only the new, derivative changes to the work are copyrighted in the new copyright. The original work and copyright still belong to the holder of original copyright.

No one can slighty change a work and claim copyright over the entire work. Doing so is copyright infringement. If it were not, by law, infringement and one could freely modify and change other's works and the copyright them in one's own name, then we would not even be having this discussion -- the concept of infringement would not exist. Nor would copyrights.

You're arguing against a position I'm not taking. Let me make it more clear

Person A writes a book and owns the copyright on the book.
Person B scans the book and owns a derived copyright on the scan documents.

Person B's copyright doesn't allow him to distribute his scans fully without respect to Person A's copyright. Consent from person A isn't sufficient to allow person C the right to copy person B's files. The question as to whether person B was legally entitled to take the scan is a different one entirely. Should person A's copyright lapse, person B's copyright may still remain.

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An old master can not be copyrighted. It is public domain. If it is re-published in a book, the book is copyrighted and the reproduction of the old master can be copyrighted. But, the old master itself is still public domain.

In the case of the old master, yes the original is public domain, but since the museum who owns it won't let you scan it yourself you'll never have a public domain digital representation because of the copyright on the derived scan. The scan is itself a reproduction, and has a derived copyright.

I didn't say the suit was in the USSR. I'm familiar with it. The copyrights were in dispute.

Ok, but you appear to be asserting that a composer or songwriter in the US can refuse the right to cover a piece of music, and I can find no evidence of such law. In the EU that may be possible, but not as far as I'm aware in the US. If you're not asserting that then I have no idea what it is you're saying.

Copyright can be, in a few instances such as commercial piracy operations, but patents never ever are. Have you read the copyright portion of this suit? The strong part isn't significant and the significant part isn't strong.

I seriously doubt that Google will get a felony conviction for the 750 lines of code that they actually did copy, though they should certainly have to pay damages for them. The api prototypes will almost certainly be found not to be an issue, there's tons of precedent there - Oracle itself would be infringing Microsofts copyright on spreadsheet functions if that was the case.

Well, we're discussing both copyrights and patents. The concept is that even if the original material still exists in the copyright holders possession, the copies made from it are stolen, and subject to criminal law if done for commercial purposes, under the proper circumstances.

While patent theft isn't subject to criminal law, the concept remains the same. Copying the patent in another work, is still theft. The legal distinction between the two doesn't lessen the moral equivalence. I suppose it does to you, but not to most people.

A lot of law hasn't caught up to what is property in modern terms. It might someday, but that doesn't change the morality of an action.

Well, we're discussing both copyrights and patents. The concept is that even if the original material still exists in the copyright holders possession, the copies made from it are stolen, and subject to criminal law if done for commercial purposes, under the proper circumstances.

While patent theft isn't subject to criminal law, the concept remains the same. Copying the patent in another work, is still theft. The legal distinction between the two doesn't lessen the moral equivalence. I suppose it does to you, but not to most people.

A lot of law hasn't caught up to what is property in modern terms. It might someday, but that doesn't change the morality of an action.

So basically you're saying that although theft is a criminal act and although patent infringement isn't a criminal act, that patent infringement is still theft because it seems like it to you?

Ok, but you appear to be asserting that a composer or songwriter in the US can refuse the right to cover a piece of music, and I can find no evidence of such law. In the EU that may be possible, but not as far as I'm aware in the US. If you're not asserting that then I have no idea what it is you're saying.

I don't know why "cover" songs are being brought up here. They are still subject to copyright.

I think it is a basic misunderstanding of how this works. If you are doing a secondary recording, you still need to get a license to do it, either from the songwriter(s), or from the agency that handles the copyrights. There is no free ride.

It's an attempt to brand something theft. It would be like me accusing you of committing a violent assault on logic.

It's a standard way of describing it.

The difference you are having with most people here, because it's not just me, is that you are hiding behind the legal systems' definitions, while we are, you might say, hiding behind the cultural definition of theft.

To us, taking something that isn't yours, is theft.
To you, taking something that isn't yours isn't theft if it's civil rather than criminal.

I think that most of us prefer the general, cultural understanding of what theft means.

The difference you are having with most people here, because it's not just me, is that you are hiding behind the legal systems' definitions, while we are, you might say, hiding behind the cultural definition of theft.

I'm not hiding behind anything- I'm defending the existing meanings of words whereas you are attempting to redefine them to suit your convenience. If you want to start a movement to have patent infringement made into a felony called patent theft go right ahead, but just be prepared to have EVERY firm in the IT business, even Apple, oppose you.

Until such time as there is a crime of patent theft, we should all accept that infringement isn't the same thing for damned good reasons.

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To us, taking something that isn't yours, is theft.
To you, taking something that isn't yours isn't theft if it's civil rather than criminal.

I think that most of us prefer the general, cultural understanding of what theft means.

Right, the 'everybody knows' argument. Do I really need to tell you how stupid that is?

If I infringe a patent I take nothing from the patent assignee, especially if the patent turns out to be invalid. If the patent does turn out to be invalid then presumably by your 'logic' the assignee has committed fraud? Or perhaps racketeering?

Everybody knows that if I demand money for something I have no right to then it's either fraud or racketeering right?

That's your typical lack of understanding what someone is saying, or a usual deliberate attempt at convoluting several separate things as though they are one.

You should know very well what I mean. I'm assuming you know you've lost the argument, so you're resorting to nonsense to get things off track.

No - I'm attempting to demonstrate to you how profoundly stupid your argument is, by asserting something equally stupid in the hope that it might get through. I'm not sanguine of the chances, but I keep trying.

As for convoluting things, you're the one who dragged copyright into the patent discussion in order to bolster the claim that it's theft, before switching to a claim of cultural equivalence. Because that's not muddying the waters at all right?

I don't know why "cover" songs are being brought up here. They are still subject to copyright.

I think it is a basic misunderstanding of how this works. If you are doing a secondary recording, you still need to get a license to do it, either from the songwriter(s), or from the agency that handles the copyrights. There is no free ride.

You have to pay, you don't have to get permission - different things. And you can record the cover without even paying, you just can't distribute. The point is that Google didn't necessarily need consent to scan the books, because the law there is as yet unclear. It may fall under fair use.

Wait, Google is trying to SUPPRESS information? I thought they were all about open. OPEN! Open always wins! Remember that, Google? What, was that just a saying fabricated to dupe open source zealots?

It's amusing when people go, "Google still isn't evil. Milosevic is evil. Google hasn't committed genocide; therefore, they are not evil." If Milosevic and other brutal dictators are where the line to evil begins, then even Lodsys consists of saints.

I'm not hiding behind anything- I'm defending the existing meanings of words whereas you are attempting to redefine them to suit your convenience. If you want to start a movement to have patent infringement made into a felony called patent theft go right ahead, but just be prepared to have EVERY firm in the IT business, even Apple, oppose you.

Until such time as there is a crime of patent theft, we should all accept that infringement isn't the same thing for damned good reasons.

It seems that as long as it doesn't rise to the level of criminal behavior, you don't think of it as being wrong. If it weren't wrong, the courts wouldn't address the issue. The reason it isn't criminal is because of expediency. If executives were thrown into prison every time some license was violated, there wouldn't be any executives left to run the company.

In addition, executives are protected against this because a company is treated, legally, as an entity, with certain rights. You can't throw a corporation into the pokey, but you can do the next best thing, which is to make them pay up big.

Quote:

Right, the 'everybody knows' argument. Do I really need to tell you how stupid that is?

If I infringe a patent I take nothing from the patent assignee, especially if the patent turns out to be invalid. If the patent does turn out to be invalid then presumably by your 'logic' the assignee has committed fraud? Or perhaps racketeering?

Everybody knows that if I demand money for something I have no right to then it's either fraud or racketeering right?

The everybody knows, or the "I know it when I see it" arguments are a legal framework that even Supreme Court justices use. It was used in the question of what pornography is, famously.

If a patent turns out to be invalid, then, obviously, you aren't taking anything, and so it isn't a part of this discussion at all.

But if it is valid, then it just as obviously is valuable. That you fail to recognize that is amazing! Why have patents in the first place if they aren't of value? The very fact of their existence proves your argument that you aren't taking anything of value to be false.

Ok, but how do you square that away with the first office actions on these patents going mostly against Oracle? If stealing is stealing, and if not licensing a patent is stealing, what is the crime when you license a patent and the patent is invalid?

Is the licensor selling stolen goods? Is it fraud? Is it racketeering? What is it? Do you realize that if you pay license fees for a patent which is subsequently invalidated you don't get any of that money back?

The reason why infringing a patent isn't theft is because it's not clear cut, you don't have absolute title to a patent in the way that you do to say your TV set.

No - I'm attempting to demonstrate to you how profoundly stupid your argument is, by asserting something equally stupid in the hope that it might get through. I'm not sanguine of the chances, but I keep trying.

As for convoluting things, you're the one who dragged copyright into the patent discussion in order to bolster the claim that it's theft, before switching to a claim of cultural equivalence. Because that's not muddying the waters at all right?

My arguments make perfect sense. It's yours that are lacking. Others brought copyright into this before me. You mentioned this as well. When Google book scanning was first brought up, an argument you joyfully joined, that was well before my post.